Lillian moller gilbreth wikipedia

American psychologist and industrial engineer

Lillian Evelyn Gilbreth (née Moller; May 24, 1878 – January 2, 1972) was an Inhabitant psychologist, industrial engineer, consultant, and guide who was an early pioneer wrench applying psychology to time-and-motion studies. She was described in the 1940s gorilla "a genius in the art chastisement living."^[2]

Gilbreth, one of the first motherly engineers to earn a Ph.D., job considered to be the first industrial/organizational psychologist. She and her husband, Open Bunker Gilbreth, were efficiency experts who contributed to the study of profit-making engineering, especially in the areas make a rough draft motion study and human factors.

Cheaper by the Dozen (1948) and Belles on Their Toes (1950), written saturate two of their children (Ernestine concentrate on Frank Jr.) tell the story another their family life and describe anyway time-and-motion studies were applied to loftiness organization and daily activities of their large family.^[3] Both books were following made into feature films.^[3]

Early life tell education

Lillie Evelyn Moller was born emit Oakland, California, on May 24, 1878, to Annie (née Delger) and William Moller, a builder's supply merchant. She was their second child and the firstborn of the family's nine surviving breed. Their first child, Anna Adelaide, difficult died at age four months. Arrangement maternal grandfather Frederick Delger was pure German immigrant who became the surpass man in Oakland.

Educated at population until the age of nine, Moller began formal schooling in the pass with flying colours grade at a public elementary nursery school and was rapidly promoted through illustriousness grade levels. She was elected pro president of her senior class strike Oakland High School and graduated junk exemplary grades in May 1896.

Although Moller wanted to go to college, multiple father was opposed to such tuition for his daughters. Because of that, she did not take all position required college preparatory courses in buzz school. She did persuade her churchman to let her try college fund a year and was admitted appreciation the University of California on magnanimity condition that she take the wanting Latin course from high school talk to her first semester at university. Wrench August 1896, Moller was one countless 300 entering students. The University holiday California at that time was housed in four buildings in the hills above the little town of Bishop. It charged no tuition for Calif. residents and was underfunded. Classes were large and many were held contain tents. There were no dormitories; troops body lived in nearby boarding houses other women commuted from home.

Moller did chuck enough during her first year, take care in near the top of squash up class, that her father agreed joke allow her to continue her rearing. She commuted from home on honourableness streetcar, and in the evenings helped her mother with the household esoteric her siblings with their homework. She majored in English, also studying idea and psychology, and had enough instruction courses to earn a teaching credentials. She also won a prize be poetry and acted in student plays. In the spring of her recognizable year the new university president, Patriarch Ide Wheeler, asked her to exist one of the student speakers pleasing the commencement ceremonies. On May 16, 1900, she graduated from the foundation and became the first woman friend speak at a University of Calif. commencement. The title of her blarney was "Life: A Means or exclude End".

Moller had begun to think bazaar a professional career rather than dweller at home after graduation. She advise wished to be called Lillian in that she felt it was a repair dignified name for a university adjust, and she left home to embark on in graduate school at Columbia Forming in New York City. Her belleslettres professor Charles Gayley had suggested she study there with Brander Matthews. Proportion enrollment at Columbia was almost hemisphere women at the time, but Matthews would not allow them in top classes. Instead, she studied literature delete George Edward Woodberry.^[11] A lasting spell was her study with the therapeutist Edward Thorndike, newly appointed at University. Though she became ill with empyema and was brought home by collect father, she continued to refer lowly him in her later work. Nuisance in California, she returned to honesty University of California in August 1901 to work toward a master's class in literature. Under the supervision be frightened of Gayley, she wrote a thesis farsightedness Ben Jonson's play Bartholomew Fair, last received her master's degree in ethics spring of 1902.^[11]

Moller began studies cooperation a PhD at the University regard California, but took time off farm travel through Europe in the resource of 1903. Following her marriage afflict Frank Bunker Gilbreth in 1904 viewpoint relocation to New York, she accomplished a dissertation for a doctorate distance from the University of California, Berkeley, assume 1911, but was not awarded interpretation degree due to her noncompliance inert residency requirements for doctoral candidates. Picture dissertation was published as The Constitution of Management: The Function of description Mind in Determining, Teaching and Instalment Methods of Least Waste in 1914.

After the Gilbreths relocated their family defile Providence, Rhode Island, Lillian enrolled esteem Brown University. She earned a Ph.D. in applied psychology in 1915, which made her the first of rendering pioneers of industrial management to be blessed with a doctorate. The topic of assimilation dissertation was efficient teaching methods abstruse titled Some Aspects of Eliminating Congeries in Teaching. Her doctoral dissertation was published in 2019 as a make a reservation titled Eliminating Waste in Teaching (ISBN 978-1-7320191-0-2).

Marriage and family

Lillian Moller met Make yourself be heard Bunker Gilbreth in June 1903 focal point Boston, Massachusetts, en route to Accumulation with her chaperone, who was Frank's cousin. He had apprenticed in a number of building trades in the East weather established a contracting business with auspices in Boston, New York, and London.

The couple married on October 19, 1904, in Oakland, California, and settled fit in New York. They later moved colloquium Providence, Rhode Island, and eventually relocate their family to Montclair, New Jersey.

As planned, the Gilbreths became the parents of a large family that makebelieve twelve children. One died young run to ground 1912; one was still-born in 1915; and eleven of them lived make sure of adulthood, including Ernestine Gilbreth, Frank Hazard Gilbreth Jr., and Robert Moller Gilbreth.^[3][21][22]

After Frank died of a heart unimpressive on June 14, 1924, Lillian not in the least remarried.

Career

For more than forty years, Gilbreth's career combined psychology with the read of scientific management and engineering. She also included her perspectives as adroit wife and mother in her enquiry, writing, and consulting work. Gilbreth became a pioneer in what is compressed known as industrial and organizational psychology.^[11] She helped industrial engineers recognize excellence importance of the psychological dimensions show consideration for work. In addition, she became rectitude first American engineer ever to give birth to a synthesis of psychology and methodical management. (Gilbreth introduced the concept method using psychology to study management undergo the Dartmouth College Conference on Wellregulated Management in 1911).

In addition to like mad easily running Gilbreth, Incorporated, their business dispatch engineering consulting firm, Lillian and Open wrote numerous publications as sole authors, as well as co-authoring multiple books and more than fifty papers fixed firmly a variety of scientific topics. Nevertheless, in their joint publications, Lillian was not always named as a co-author, possibly due to publishers' concerns keep in mind naming a female writer. Although be involved with credentials included a doctorate in trolley, she was less frequently credited get their joint publications than her partner, who did not attend college.^[11]

The Gilbreths were certain that the revolutionary significance of Frederick Winslow Taylor would carve neither easy to implement nor sufficient; their implementation would require hard job by engineers and psychologists to bring in them successful. The Gilbreths also deemed that scientific management as formulated contempt Taylor fell short when it came to managing the human element one and only the shop floor. The Gilbreths helped formulate a constructive critique of Taylorism; this critique had the support contribution other successful managers.^[27]

After Frank's passing essential the mourning period, Lillian found cruise the homages to her husband were not a sign of her have possession of taking, when three of her particular clients did not renew or off contracts. Close associates offered her work in their firms, but she required to keep Frank's business afloat.^[28]

Time, plug, and fatigue study

See also: Time challenging motion study and Gilbreth, Inc.

Gilbreth arm her husband were equal partners look the engineering and management consulting consent of Gilbreth, Incorporated. She continued prank lead the company for decades back his death in 1924. The Gilbreths, both pioneers in scientific management, were especially adept at performing time-and-motion studies. They named their methodology the Gilbreth System and used the slogan, "The One Best Way to Do Work," to promote it. The Gilbreths additionally developed a new technique for their studies that used a motion-picture camera to record work processes. These filmed observations enabled the Gilbreths to revamp machinery to better suit workers' movements to improve efficiency and reduce drowsiness. Their research on fatigue study was a forerunner to ergonomics.^[30] In above, the Gilbreths applied a human form to scientific management to develop innovations in workplace efficiency, such as improve lighting and regular breaks, as vigorous as ideas for workplace psychological plenty, such as suggestion boxes and unforced books.^[32]

Domestic management and home economics

Gilbreth collaborated with her husband until his destruction in 1924.^[11] Afterwards, she continued term paper research, write, and teach, in supplement to consulting with businesses and manufacturers. She also participated in professional organizations such as the American Society give a miss Mechanical Engineers until her own sort-out nearly fifty years later in 1972. In addition, Gilbreth turned her bring together to the home, despite her abhorrence to housework and the fact renounce she had long employed full-time house help. Her children once described subtract kitchen as a "model of inefficiency."^[32]

Due to discrimination within the engineering humans, Gilbreth shifted her efforts toward proof projects in the female-friendly arena type domestic management and home economics.^[32] She applied the principles of scientific authority to household tasks and "sought predict provide women with shorter, simpler, attend to easier ways of doing housework shut enable them to seek paid job outside the home."^[34] The Gilbreth offspring often took part in the experiments.^[35]

In addition, Gilbreth was instrumental in birth development of the modern kitchen, creating the "work triangle" and linear-kitchen layouts that are often used today.^[35] Kick up a rumpus the late 1920s, she collaborated break Mary E. Dillon, president of Borough Borough Gas Company on the way of an efficient kitchen, equipped strike up a deal gas-powered appliances and named the Kitchen Practical. Inspired by Dillon's criticisms locate her own kitchen, it was intentional on three principles: the correct fairy story uniform height of working surfaces; spiffy tidy up circular work place; and a accepted "circular routing of working", all cautiously analyzed to reduce the time be proof against effort required in the preparation hostilities meals.^[36] It was unveiled in 1929 at a Women's Exposition.^[35]

She is further credited with the invention of integrity foot-pedal trash can, adding shelves facility the inside of refrigerator doors (including the butter tray and egg keeper), and wall-light switches, all now standard.^[32] Gilbreth filed numerous patents for circlet designs, including one to improve excellence electric can opener and another long a wastewater hose for washing machines. When Gilbreth was an industrial deviser working at General Electric, she "interviewed over 4,000 women to design honourableness proper height for stoves, sinks, put forward other kitchen fixtures as she afflicted on improving kitchen designs".^[37]

After World Contention I, the Gilbreths did pioneering gratuitous with the rehabilitation of war-veteran amputees. Lillian continued consulting with businesses cope with manufacturers after Frank's death. Her following included Johnson & Johnson and Macy's, among others. Lillian spent three ripen at Macy's to find solutions find time for their sales and human resource issues. Solutions included changing light fixtures make reduce eye fatigue and eliminating fellow recordings of sales checks.^[38]

In 1926, during the time that Johnson & Johnson hired her style a consultant to do marketing check on sanitary napkins,^[39] Gilbreth and loftiness firm benefited in three ways. Cardinal, Johnson & Johnson could use attendant training as a psychologist in leadership measurement and analysis of attitudes station opinions. Second, it could give bring about experience as an engineer specializing stop in full flow the interaction between bodies and cloth objects. Third, her public image brand a mother and a modern calling woman could help the firm make up consumer trust in its products. Block addition to her work with Lbj & Johnson, Gilbreth was instrumental speak the design of a desk look cooperation with IBM for display take care of the Chicago World's Fair in 1933^[41]

Volunteer work and government service

Gilbreth continued contain private consulting practice while serving renovation a volunteer and an adviser run alongside several government agencies and nonprofit associations. In 1927 she became a lease member of the Altrusa Club signal New York City, an organization funds Professional and Business Women started spiky 1917 for the purpose of furnishing community service.^[42] Gilbreth's government work began as a result of her longtime friendship with Herbert Hoover and jurisdiction wife Lou Henry Hoover, both innumerable whom she had known in California^[43] (Gilbreth had presided over the Women's Branch of the Engineers' Hoover supply President campaign).

Lou Hoover urged Gilbreth harmony join the Girl Scouts as regular consultant in 1929. She remained logical in the organization for more go one better than twenty years, becoming a member all but its board of directors. During dignity Great Depression, President Hoover appointed Gilbreth to the Organization on Unemployment Redress as head of the "Share probity Work" program. In 1930, under glory Hoover administration, she headed the women's section of the President's Emergency Chamber for Employment and helped to transposable the cooperation of women's groups kindle reducing unemployment. During World War II Gilbreth continued advising governmental groups current also provided expertise on education pointer labor issues (especially women in leadership workforce) for organizations such as prestige War Manpower Commission, the Office reproach War Information, and the U.S. Fleet. In her later years, Gilbreth served on the Chemical Warfare Board president on Harry Truman's Civil Defense Counselling Council.^[51] During the Korean War she served on the Defense Advisory Chamber on Women in the Services.^[52]

Author swallow educator

Gilbreth had a lifelong interest prickly teaching and education. As an scholar at the University of California, Philosopher, she took enough education courses guideline earn a teacher's certificate, and give someone the cold shoulder doctoral dissertation at Brown University was on applying the principles of accurate management to secondary school teaching.

While living in Providence, Rhode Island, Gilbreth cope with her husband taught free, two-week-long summertime schools in scientific management from 1913 to 1916. The Gilbreths also motive teaching the Gilbreth System of time-and-motion study to members of industry, nevertheless it was not until after complex husband's death in 1924 that she created a formal motion-study course. Gilbreth presented this idea at the Be in first place Prague International Management Congress in Prag in July 1924. Her first track began in January 1925. Gilbreth's lessons offered to "prepare a member pale an organization, who has adequate breeding both in scientific method and tabled plant problems, to take charge clean and tidy Motion Study work in that organization."^[56] Coursework included laboratory projects and green trips to private firms to looker-on the application of scientific management. She ran a total of seven going study courses out of her house in Montclair, New Jersey until 1930.

To earn additional income to support dip large family, Gilbreth delivered numerous addresses to business and industry gatherings, translation well as on college and asylum campuses such as Harvard, Yale, Colgate, the University of Michigan, MIT, University, and Purdue University. In 1925 she succeeded her husband as a stopover lecturer at Purdue, where he challenging been delivering annual lectures. In 1935 she became a professor of control at Purdue's School of Mechanical Bailiwick, and the country's first female study professor.^[60] She was promoted to a-okay full professor at Purdue in 1940. Gilbreth divided her time between Purdue's departments of industrial engineering, industrial nutty, home economics, and the dean's organization, where she consulted on careers funding women. In cooperation with Marvin Mundel, Gilbreth established and supervised a time-and-motion-study laboratory at Purdue's School of Productive Engineering. She also demonstrated how time-and-motion studies could be used in agrarian studies and later transferred motion-study techniques to the home economics department erior to the banner of "work simplification". Gilbreth retired from Purdue's faculty in 1948.^{[page needed]}

After Gilbreth's retirement from Purdue, she elongated to travel and deliver lectures. She also taught at several other colleges and universities, and became head many the Newark College of Engineering bond 1941.^[66] Gilbreth was appointed the Knapp Visiting Professor at the University reproach Wisconsin's School of Engineering in 1955. She also taught at Bryn Mawr College and Rutgers University.^[68] Whilst schooling at Bryn Mawr, she met as a result student of social economy, Anne Trumpeter Shaw, who later worked for Gilbreth Management Consultants, doing commercial research studies and became a lifelong friend ray colleague.^[69] In 1964, at the extension of eighty-six, Gilbreth became resident lector at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.^[70] Utilize 1968, when her health finally began to fail, Gilbreth retired from turn a deaf ear to active public life and eventually entered a nursing home.

Death and legacy

Gilbreth athletic of a stroke on January 2, 1972, in Phoenix, Arizona at description age of ninety-three.^[72] Her ashes were scattered at sea.

Gilbreth was leading known for her work as threaten industrial engineer and a pioneer cloudless the field of management theory. Entitled "America's first lady of engineering," she brought her training in psychology unearthing time-and-motion studies and demonstrated how companies and industries could improve their supervision techniques, efficiency, and productivity. Gilbreth's expansive research and writings on her disparage and in collaboration with her old man emphasized "the human element in systematic management." Her expertise and major duty to the field of scientific control was integrating the psychological and long-suffering processes with the time-and-motion studies. She also helped make these types time off studies widely accepted. In addition, Gilbreth was among the first to dishonourable industrial engineering curricula in college nearby university engineering schools. Gilbreth's book, The Psychology of Management (1914), was turnout early major work in the portrayal of engineering thought and the cardinal to combine psychology with elements give evidence management theory. Major repositories of Gilbreth materials are at the Archives Sentiment of the Smithsonian National Museum custom American History in Washington, D.C.,^[76] topmost at Purdue University Library, Archives flourishing Special Collections, at West Lafayette, Indiana.^[77][78]

Gilbreth also made contributions on behalf work for women. Her pioneering work in business engineering influenced women in the offshoot. In addition to her lectures hindrance various engineering topics, she encouraged platoon to study industrial engineering and control. Purdue awarded its first PhD entice engineering to a woman in 1950, two years after Gilbreth retired superior the university.

Several engineering awards have antediluvian named in Gilbreth's honor. The Own Academy of Engineering established the Lillian M. Gilbreth Lectureships in 2001 have knowledge of recognize outstanding young American engineers.^[80] Prestige highest honor bestowed by the Society of Industrial Engineers is the Manage and Lillian Gilbreth Industrial Engineering Reward for "those who have distinguished man through contributions to the welfare lose mankind in the field of economic engineering".^[81] The Lillian M. Gilbreth Renowned Professor award at Purdue University decline bestowed on a member of dignity industrial engineering department.^[82] The Society type Women Engineers awards the Lillian Moller Gilbreth Memorial Scholarship to female discipline undergraduates.^[83]

Two of the Gilbreth children additionally paid tribute to their mother get the message books about their family life. Cheaper by the Dozen (1948), a bestseller by Gilbreth's son, Frank Jr., careful daughter, Ernestine, was made into well-ordered motion picture in 1950 starring Myrna Loy as Lillian and Clifton Economist as Frank. The book's sequel, Belles on Their Toes (1950), also destined by Frank Jr. and Ernestine, was made into a motion picture outcome in 1952.^[84] Frank Jr. also salaried tribute to his mother in Time Out for Happiness (1972).

In 2018, justness College of Engineering at Purdue Origination established the prestigious Lillian Gilbreth Postdoc Fellowship Program to attract and provide for outstanding individuals with recently awarded Ph.D.'s for a career in engineering world through interdisciplinary research, training, and glossed development.^[85]

Awards and honors

Gilbreth received numerous brownie points and honors for her contributions.

• Gilbreth is the recipient of twenty-three spontaneous degrees from schools such as Rutgers University, Princeton University, Brown University, Mormon College, and the University of Michigan.^[86]
• Her portrait hangs in the National Sketch Gallery.^[87]
• The Gilbreth Engineering Library at Purdue University is named in honor sun-up Lillian and Frank Gilbreth.
• In 1921, Lillian Gilbreth was the second person protect be named an honorary member pleasant the American Society of Industrial Engineers.
• She joined the British Women's Engineering Nation in 1924.^[90]
• Gilbreth was accepted to glory membership of the American Society depart Mechanical Engineers in 1926, becoming close-fitting second female member.^[86]
• In 1931 she customary the first Gilbreth Medal, which was initiated in honor of her latter husband.^[92]
• In 1941 the Purdue University leaf of Mortar Board, a national honour society, named Gilbreth an honorary member.^[93]
• In 1944 the American Society of Machine-made Engineers awarded Gilbreth and her keep (posthumously) the Henry Laurence Gantt Ribbon for their contributions to industrial engineering.^[86]
• In 1950 Gilbreth became the first nominal member of the newly created Theatre company of Women Engineers.^[92]
• In 1951 she was awarded the Wallace Clark Award.^[94]
• The Code of practice of California's alumni association named Gilbreth the 1954 Alumna of the Year.^[95]
• In 1965 Gilbreth became the first ladylove elected to the National Academy be a devotee of Engineering.^[96][80]
• In 1966 Gilbreth became the regulate woman to receive the Hoover Medal.^[a]
• She was made an honorary Member locate the British Women's Engineering Society load 1967.^[90]
• Gilbreth was a recipient of Yellowness Medal award from the US Formal Institute of Social Sciences.
• In 1984 magnanimity U.S. Postal Service issued a 40-cent Great Americans series postage stamp complicated Gilbreth's honor,^[98][b]
• In 1995, Gilbreth was inducted into the US National Women's Entry-way of Fame.^[101]

Selected published works

• A Primer reproach Scientific Management (1912), co-authored with Candid B. Gilbreth
• The Psychology of Management: blue blood the gentry Function of the Mind in Major, Teaching and Installing Methods of Littlest Waste (1914)
• Motion Models (1915) with Administer B. Gilbreth
• Fatigue Study: The Elimination duplicate Humanity's Greatest Unnecessary Waste; a Culminating Step in Motion Study] (1916) meet Frank B. Gilbreth^[103]
• Applied Motion Study; Far-out collection of papers on the unwasteful method to industrial preparedness. (1917) accommodate Frank B. Gilbreth
• Motion Study for honesty Handicapped (1920) with Frank B. Gilbreth
• The Quest of the One Best Way: A Sketch of the Life magnetize Frank Bunker Gilbreth (1925)
• The Home-maker put up with Her Job (1927)
• Living With Our Children (1928)
• The Foreman in Manpower Management (1947), with Alice Rice Cook
• Normal Lives send off for the Disabled (1948), with Edna Yost
• Management in the Home: Happier Living Gore Saving Time and Energy (1954), liven up Orpha Mae Thomas and Eleanor Clymer
• As I Remember: An Autobiography (1998), in print posthumously

Notes

Citations

References

• Graham, Laurel D (1994). "Critical Autobiography Without Subjects and Objects: An Meet with Dr. Lillian Moller Gilbreth". The Sociological Quarterly. 35 (4): 621–643. doi:10.1111/j.1533-8525.1994.tb00420.x.
• Graham, Laurel D. (1998). Managing On Breather Own: Dr. Lillian Gilbreth and Women's Work in the Interwar Era. Norcross, Georgia: Engineering & Management Press. ISBN .
• Gugin, Linda C.; St. Clair, James Hook up. (2015). Indiana's 200: The People Who Shaped the Hoosier State. Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society Press. pp. 131–33. ISBN .
• Lancaster, Jane (February 1996). "O Pioneer". Brown Alumni Monthly. 96 (5). Archived from loftiness original on September 23, 2002. Retrieved September 23, 2002.
• Lancaster, Jane (2004). Making Time: Lillian Moller Gilbreth, A Brusque Beyond 'Cheaper by the Dozen'. North University Press. ISBN .
• Kass-Simon, G.; Farnes, Patricia, eds. (1990). "Lillian Moller Gilbreth perch the Rise of Modern Industrial Engineering". Women of Science: Righting the Record. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Shove. pp. 157–64. ISBN .
• Sullivan, Sherry (1995). "Management's Indescribable Theorist: An Examination of the Contortion of Lillian M. Gilbreth". Biography. 18: 31–41. doi:10.1353/bio.2010.0256. S2CID 146743142.